The aim and object of Lent is not just penance, but grace.
To now we have always regarded Lent as a time
specially set aside for penance, a time for examining our consciences and doing
penance for our sins. The struggle against sin was always made the central
factor of this season. If we failed to find
anything about penance and contrition in the liturgical texts, we felt
strangely uneasy. But is this the actual
purpose of Lent? Was this the reason why
the Church introduced the Lenten season?
I think we will understand this season better if we look at it from the
standpoint of Easter. Lent is a time of
preparation for Easter. And what
significance has Easter for the Church?
It is not just a day of remembrance of the historical fact of Christ's
death and resurrection. Easter is the
time when God opens all the flood-gates of Heaven, and lets the torrent of His
divine grace pour down upon us. At no
time in the year do we get so much grace as at Eastertide. It is this fact that we Westerners seem to
have forgotten almost entirely. The
vivid realisation of Easter as a festival of grace is something that has been
preserved for us by the Eastern Church.
At Eastertime we mortals are, as it were, quite transformed. For one day at least it is as though Paradise
had come on earth. Everything is new.
The aim and object of Lent is not just penance, but
grace. What the Church wants to do in
preparation for Easter is to lay a firm foundation of grace. Every type of Christian must make good use of
the means that lead to grace: Catechumens, preparation for Baptism; penitents,
penance; the faithful, God's word and the Eucharist. That was the original purpose of Lent.
…This year, then, let us think of Lent in the way in
which the Church solemnly proclaims it on the First Sunday of Lent: "We
entreat you not to offer God's grace an ineffectual welcome… Here is the time
of pardon (of grace); the day of salvation has come already." If grace is
truly man's highest good, then it is only right and proper to devote forty days
of the year to taking particular care of it.
Admittedly it is God's free gift to us, but we must try to make
ourselves worthy of it by self-preparation and self-surrender'.
Lent is our penitential season. So we need to understand penitence. Briefly, penitence is Godly sorrow. There is also ungodly sorrow:
– Self-pity is
one form.
– We can be
sorry for our sins because they keep us from thinking of ourselves as good
people.
– We can be
sorry because our sins make us look bad to others, and because we then need to
apologise and we find apologies distasteful.
– We may
dislike going to confession. These are
all forms of sorrow for sin, which are also self-centred, ultimately rooted in
pride.
FATHER PIUS PARSCH
Re. CERC
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